Israelites took oaths that made their statements legally obligating because they implored the presence of God in the commitment—but this only happened because half-truths, deceptions, and lies were all too common. To take oaths was to assume that honest speech was not always present. Jesus speaks to a culture of legal oath-taking and calls his disciples to go further into truthful and honest speech. Jesus desires a Kingdom reality where people can let their ‘yes’ be a ‘yes’ and ‘no’ be a ‘no’. We might view the practice of open honesty as naive and unwise in our culture of false advertising and legal loopholes. However, Jesus is imagining a future Kingdom reality where honest and truthful speech is a given — and is calling his disciples to live in this future now. We live Jesus-shaped speech into our world when we live with utter honesty and work against systems where dishonesty has become systemic. We live into Jesus-shaped speech when we refuse to use legal means as a basis to control a narrative. We live into Jesus-shaped speech when our words refuse to be co-opted by false narratives and half-truths to benefit ourselves. Jesus blesses those who long for righteousness and justice— and that justice extends to our speech. 

Jesus continues his antitheses statements by addressing adultery and divorce. The Law prohibited adultery, which is having sex with anyone other than your spouse. Jesus goes further than the law by speaking against the root cause of adultery: lust. Lust is when we look to desire and intentionally foster sexual temptation and arousal through the imagination. Jesus is against lust because it causes us to dehumanize others and treat them like objects. Similarly, Jesus speaks against the dehumanizing practice of men writing certificates of divorce to their wives for "any reason”(19.3). The relaxed practices of divorce in Jesus’ day empowered patriarchal structures and disempowered mutuality in marriage. Jesus has in mind a view of sexuality that is grounded in covenant faithfulness, mutuality, love, and goodness. When our sexuality is grounded in merely gratifying personal desires, we run the risk of going down the path of destruction. Jesus is teaching that when you treat people as objects for your gratification you are moving in a direction that is absolutely contrary to the direction of the Kingdom of God. This is a road that moves away from life and love toward destruction and the fires of Gehenna. So as TMP seeks to follow the Jesus way— how might we ground our view of sexuality that is life-giving and not destructive? What does it look like to live into a sexuality that is grounded in covenant faithfulness, mutuality, goodness, and love? 

Murder was a serious offence in the Torah. (Numb.35:16-28) To deliberately kill another human was punishable by death. Even if the killing was unintentional, the guilty person would need to flee to a city of refuge to escape retaliation. Simply put, the Law tried to limit murder from getting out of hand by addressing the act of murder. Jesus enters into this discussion about murder with the first of his antitheses statements. “You’ve heard it said.. but I say to you”. Jesus reveals a fuller expression of God’s will for God’s people. In Jesus, we discover that the prohibition of murder is the surface expression of a deeper divine intent: Anger is counterintuitive to being people of reconciliation. If one master's anger, murder will never occur. Jesus is telling his followers that right-relationships matter even more than a sacrifice offered on the altar (V23-24). To follow Jesus is to be quick to reconcile with those who “have something against us”(v23). As we at TMP seek to follow Jesus— what might it mean to put to death our hostilities? What might it look like to be active agents in reconciliation?

Jesus insists he’s come to fulfill the Old Testament, and fulfill it completely. He hyperbolically says “not one letter or stroke of the pen will pass away until I fulfill it.” He’s going to fulfill the law in a way that goes beyond the righteousness of the Pharisees, not by literally adhering to every letter or stroke of the pen—something Jesus obviously didn’t do. Jesus fulfilled the law by embodying the ultimate intention of the law. Jesus assumes God’s ultimate goal in giving the law wasn’t to simply get people to comply with behavioural rules. The ultimate goal behind the law was to establish people in “righteousness,” which means being people of justice and right-relatedness, or love. In his life, death and resurrection, Jesus illustrates a love for us so that we can live in it. (1 Jn 3:16-17) Our most central job is to receive this love, yield to this love, be transformed by this love, and then imitate this love. It is only through becoming people of Jesus-shaped love do we fulfill the intention of the law. 

The Sermon on the Mount begins with a list of counterintuitive blessings on an unlikely group of personalities. This list of blessings is a Kingdom manifesto called the Beatitudes, and it describes the sort of people through whom God is starting to bring wise and healing order to this world. After giving us the Beatitudes, Jesus then immediately begins talking about being salt and light. Salt & light people inhabit the way of Jesus to be a radical alternative to a darkened world. Both salt and light are images for impact on something else: salt impacts, for instance, meats, while light impacts darkness. It is important to understand that for Jesus, to be salt & light is to inhabit the blessings and characteristics of the Beatitudes. Too often, in the history of God’s people, the church has redefined salt & light through things like nationalism, partisan politics, culture wars, individualism, consumerism, and militarism. As a result, the church just looks like the rest of the world instead of a people who have something distinctive to offer the world. Our call is to embrace the salty & light-filled way of the Kingdom as an alternative to a world bitter with hate, sickness, disease and strife. This is our call.

We are kicking off our teaching series on the Sermon on the Mount by taking the time to hear the best sermon ever preached: The Sermon on the Mount. Our TMP Scripture Reading Team will read through the entire text of Jesus’ sermon as a way to prime us for this next series. 

We will then take some time to ask what it means for our community of The Meeting Place to engage in this call to follow the Jesus way. For some, this sermon only applies to a category of super-saints and extra-holy people. For others, this sermon is designed to function like the Law and show us that we can never be good enough— and cause us to call out for grace. And for others— Jesus’ teaching may apply in some future heaven, but it is not practical to live out now. Jesus does not seem to agree with any of the above approaches. The Sermon on the Mount begins with disciples leaving the crowd and sitting at his feet to learn and imitate him (5:1). Then when Jesus closes the Sermon on the Mount, he finishes with the example of the wise and foolish builders. The wise builder is the one who "hears Jesus' words (meaning the previous body of teaching) and puts them into practice”. At TMP, we want to be a church that follows Jesus. So what might it mean for us to take the posture of disciple and not a member of the crowd? What might it mean for us to wisely build on the rock of Jesus’ teaching? 

Desired Outcome: To increase our Biblical literacy by reading the Sermon on the Mount—- and to ask questions of our readiness to be disciples and wise builders. 

Quotable Quote: “The difference between those who admire Jesus and those who would be his disciples is indicated by his disciple's willingness to “come to him” on the mountain. Jesus has seen the crowds. Matthew will tell us often that Jesus had compassion for the crowds or that he felt sorrow for them, but before he delivers the sermon we are told that he simply “saw the crowds”. He goes up on the mountain and the disciples follow him.” - Stanley Hauerwas 

In Matthew 3 we meet Jesus’ cousin, John the Baptist. John the Baptist’s role was to prepare the way for Jesus. He was the embodiment of Isaiah’s vision of a “voice calling in the desert to prepare the way of the Lord”. (Is 40:3) John called the people of Israel to repentance and enacted this through baptism. The Church has a role that is similar to John’s. Just as he prepared the way for Christ 2000 years ago, we too are to prepare our lives to encounter Jesus, both now, and in expectation of his second coming. We are to live today as though Jesus is coming back at any time. We don’t live the way the world lives. We are a part of a revolution. We invest in the Kingdom. We revolt against the status quo. We work to bring about the Kingdom on Earth as it is in heaven. And as we do this, we hasten the Lord’s return. On New Years Day of 2023, what might it mean to prepare the way of the Lord in our own lives? 

The Magi do not return to Herod. The response from Herod is to eliminate any possible challenge to his power-hold over Israel. Herod commands that all male baby boys under two years old be put to death. It is a tragedy. Perhaps no event in the gospels challenges our sentimental depiction of Christmas than the slaughter of these innocents. Most North American Christians don’t like to sully their sentimental version of Christmas with the account of King Herod’s collateral damage. But Matthew gives a prophetic witness to truth that becomes good news for all those on the underside of empire and evil. God is not distant to the suffering of our world. God is like Jesus — born into a dark world of trouble, trial, violence, and fear. Jesus comes to shine his light far as the curse is found. Jesus comes to heal us of the curse and darkness that sin has wrought upon us. 

We often picture the Magi as three Kings or three wise men who arrive alongside the shepherds in an epic Nativity evening of worship on an O Holy Night. The story that Scripture tells us is far more complicated. For starters, the Magi arrive on the scene after the birth of Jesus— likely years after the shepherds. (Mt 2:1) Secondly, the Magi were not kings, they were Persian astronomers, astrologers, magicians who discerned an auspicious sign in the stars and made a thousand mile journey to worship the Christ child in Bethlehem. In other words, the Magi are the last people you’d expect to show up in a story about the Jewish Messiah. And yet, the appearance of the Magi tells us that those on the outside and the fringes can find themselves at the centre of what God is doing. We learn in the story of the Magi that Jesus is calling all people to himself to worship and be transformed. And when we dare do this— we discover the journey home is by “another way”(2:12). 

Joseph was pledged to be married to Mary. As was the Jewish custom during the betrothal period, Joseph was probably away building a home and preparing for his marriage to Mary. Joseph surely had plans and dreams about what his future would look like. However, God had other plans for Joseph. Joseph’s life turned upside-down. Mary became pregnant. The child was conceived by the Holy Spirit, but Joseph did not believe this story. His future wife was pregnant and the child was not his. This was considered very scandalous, and his reputation within the community was probably at stake. Joseph first thought about divorcing Mary quietly, but then the Angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream and told him what to do. He could have not believed this, ignored the dream and said “no”. However, he listened and obeyed God, and the birth of the saviour of the world, Jesus, took place. In the same way that God spoke to Joseph, God is speaking to us. Jesus is looking for those who will listen to His voice and follow Him, even if that means giving up our own plans and dreams.